Richard III announcement

I’ve just heard that the judges’ decision on the judicial review into the validity of the licence which allowed excavation of a skeleton that subsequently turned out to be Richard III’s, will be announced in the High Court on Friday (May 23) at 10am. Leicester Cathedral, Leicester City Council, Leicestershire County Council and the University of Leicester – a bishop, a dean, a mayor, a council leader, a vice-chancellor and an archaeologist – will be joining forces in the cathedral, to face the press with their reactions. We can surely expect similar high level responses from other parties.

This is part of the interest of the curious case. The licence was correctly issued, with a statement on what might happen to any excavated remains (reburial or retention). The case against the Ministry of Justice is that once it was realised that a skeleton was that of a king (technically on February 4 2013), it should have revisited the licence, as the fate of a former monarch’s remains should be subject to public consultation rather than left to local, private decisions. Legally, a difficulty (and perhaps one of the reasons for the apparent delay in a decision) is that strictly there is no precedent. Yet a decision to treat these remains in an exceptional manner could in theory be used as precedent to question an unknown variety of past or future excavations. I’ve discussed this quite extensively in earlier blogs, look under the Richard III tab at the top of the page.